From the author: It's easy to quit smoking when you know why. I've done it hundreds of times"Mark TwainOnce I decided to test the words of the great writer from my own experience. I did not reach hundreds of “throws”. Therefore, the experiment that I conducted on myself in order to confirm Mark Twain’s hypothesis about the ease of quitting smoking by a corrosive naturalist and researcher can be called into question. I managed to repeat it only twice (youthful attempts do not count). Both times were successful... But first things first. Grisha was three years older. When you are seven or eight years old there is a huge difference. He was “experienced”, having already experienced “adult life”. Summer holidays. Village. The city boy is finally left to his own devices. A world in which there is no school and homework, and where the space of life is limited not by the four walls of a cramped apartment in a metropolis and the “schoolchild’s daily routine,” but by your physical capabilities and desires. And a little about the weather... I don’t know where Grisha got that cigarette butt, most likely he picked it up at a bus stop. It was with a filter and “fat” - about half a cigarette. The taste of the smoke turned out to be disgusting, and the smell, to put it mildly, was so-so. I was able to take two or three puffs “not in a puff”, but I was proud of “initiation” into the world of adults. Proud, like a girl who lost her virginity without any pleasure from the process with an incompetent partner, but experiencing existential joy from becoming a woman. Since that summer, “smoking” has become an obligatory ritual of our boyish life in the village. It was an adventure. First you had to “get it” - picking up cigarette butts was the easiest way, but not the most attractive or daring. Carrying cigarettes from adults was cooler, but much more dangerous. The aerobatics is to buy a pack of “North” or “News” for everyone at the general store with the change you saved. Considering that the “smokers” were no more than twelve and it took place in a village where everyone knew each other, the task turned out to be very creative. We created hiding places for storage, built secret shelters in the surrounding forests and felt absolutely happy... Since the eighth grade, I smoked regularly and “all year round,” sometimes with breaks from several weeks to a couple of months. The breaks were more or less conscious attempts to “quit.” By that time I understood that smoking is not a good habit. However, the environment and rituals that developed in the teenage company had a decisive influence. Once, during one of these rather long breaks, I was introduced at a parent meeting by our class teacher as the ONLY smoker in the class. At the same time, she knew for sure that I did not smoke at that time, and almost all the other boys in the class smoked. And it was doubly offensive... After entering medical school, I began to smoke openly for my parents, and legalized, so to speak, the use. Although they already knew. Many years later, my wife told me about her formula, about her awareness, which helped her quit smoking: “I was born a non-smoker, I have breathed clean air since childhood, why do I need this now?” This formulation helped me reconsider my own history of smoking and come to unexpected discoveries. I discovered that I could not say to myself that I was “born a non-smoker”... In the apartment where we lived, all the adults smoked, except for my mother. Father, grandmother and grandfather, mother's parents. It was always smoky in two rooms. My grandfather and grandmother smoked Belomor, I remember well how they stuffed a cotton wool “filter” into the cigarette holder, how the smoke layered around the room, and I sat in my grandmother’s arms. The concept of “passive smoking” did not yet exist in those years. I don’t think that during the period when my mother was pregnant with me, the smoking habits in our family were different. So, without any metaphors, we can say that I inhaled cigarette smoke even before I was born... The paradox of the situation was that everyone unanimously told me: “Smoking is harmful, never smoke!” If there is such a message from momcould be accepted, then in the mouths of the father and grandparents it sounded, to put it mildly, not entirely sincere. To my naive question: “Why do you smoke?” (it was necessary to add “in front of me”), followed by incomprehensible answers, like: “We are adults” and “You see how difficult it is to get rid of this bad habit.” Its harmfulness was not obvious to me at that moment and all the “spells” , which came from adults on this score, were perceived with distrust and irony. In high school we had a saying: “Smoking is harmful, smoking is poisonous, but I smoke and I’m very happy.” And the story of the horse that died from a drop of nicotine evoked in us an ironic: “Let the horse not smoke.” Smoking was a confirmation of the status of an “adult” who “is allowed.” At school, “falling for” the promotion of a healthy lifestyle, which came from teachers, was “not respectable.” And not all of them were non-smokers. More than a dozen years passed until this distortion in my consciousness was corrected. I received my first clear example of the fact that “smoking is harmful to health” at a medical institute, not in a class on pathological anatomy. The teacher showed our group the lungs of a smoker and the lungs of a non-smoker - it was an impressive difference. As the terminally ill hero of the film “Route 60” said: “They write that smoking kills. And he kills." By that time, my grandmother and grandfather had already died, but I had not yet linked my grandmother’s third heart attack and my grandfather’s stroke directly with their smoking. Just as he didn’t associate his father’s chronic cough with smoking, and even his own cough, which was already becoming habitual. This was, of course, an irrational attitude towards the subject, but the distortions did their job. The cigarette gave pleasure. And not so much physiological (physical dependence on nicotine is greatly exaggerated), but rather “procedural”. Smoking and “smoke breaks” became a significant pastime, an integral ritual of a huge number of life events. And the most important ritual of communication, including with girls. From the first acquaintance to bed and life together. To smoke at a general institute party during a long break, in the clinic on night duty, on a campfire, in a construction brigade, at a student party - not a single event was complete without cigarettes. The sentence “let’s go and have a smoke” has become something like a password, a test to determine “friend or foe.” It was indecent to refuse it, although the physical desire to smoke was not always present at that moment. Moreover, I often lit a cigarette with the full understanding that now it does not give pleasure and even causes unpleasant and painful sensations. The environment controlled in many ways, significantly reducing personal autonomy. But at that time I had not yet thought in terms of “dependence - autonomy”. True, as long as I can remember as a smoker, I always had the thought: “The time will come and I will quit smoking. Absolutely.” Such a time came when my smoking experience, excluding passive smoking, was about fifteen years. By that time, I was already a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, had extensive practice, including in the therapy of addicts (alcoholism, drug addiction) and knew well that “quitting” was a meaningless activity and an impossible task. I smoked about 15 cigarettes a day, sometimes up to a pack. One day I asked myself: “How many cigarettes do I smoke consciously, with PLEASURE, with ENJOY?” The answer amazed me, it turned out that NO MORE THAN THREE!!! More often one or two per day. The rest is automated actions dictated by the usual context. The insight that came at this moment is best described by the words of a character from the film “Gentlemen of Fortune”: “And I will endure this viper for fourteen years for some lousy... One or two cigarettes with pleasure and almost a pack a day... why? ?? I could not find any reasonable justification for continuing to smoke. I categorically did not want my growing son to smoke. He was then three years old. My wife and I never smoked either in front of him or in the apartment. But I knew well from my own experience that the “do as I say” strategy would not work. Only strategy works"do as I do". And I also suddenly became interested in living as a non-smoker, for the first time in my “adult” life. It was a completely new experience and I found it very exciting. I made a decision. What happened next was a matter of technique. All that remained was to precisely formulate the desire, WHAT I WANT. I wanted to “BREATHE CLEAN AIR.” In the very first days without cigarettes, my sense of smell sharply increased. The smells of a street filled with cars and exhaust from trucks and buses became especially noticeable. The most difficult situation was in “habitual smoking” situations, one of which was warming up the car in the morning. It took place in winter, and the ritual involved smoking the “first morning cigarette” while the car was warming up. I replaced the cigarette with “chupa chups”, a round lollipop, in case anyone forgot. It turned out to be very suitable and quite tasty. I used this “substitute” for two months. It was funny to watch the reaction of fellow smokers when, at their offer to smoke, I stuffed lollipops into my mouth. Quite quickly, those around me got used to the fact that I was “breathing clean air,” provoking situations and offers became less and less, and life without cigarettes became more and more interesting. Around the same time, my classmate, a close friend and a heavy smoker, arrived from America. He was one of those who smoked especially “deliciously.” This was my first visit to Russia after a five-year absence. It turned out that Lyokha also stopped smoking. His story went like this: “You know, Sanya, I smoked in America for about a year. But one day I realized that I was paying too much for pleasure. In order to smoke, I need to leave the laboratory, go down the elevator from the seventh floor, go out of the building onto the street, walk along a path in the snow about two hundred meters around the corner to a specially designated place and there, in the company of those shaking in the wind, smoke this unfortunate a cigarette. I decided that it would be easier to give up smoking altogether.” Today, I remember Lesha’s story every time I see people alone and forlornly smoking on the porch on the street or around the nearest corner. Young women look especially expressive in such a situation. I watch one almost every day from the window - standing alone in the middle of the yard, both in the snow and in the rain... It’s very similar to how we smoked at school. But we were teenagers, always in company, and this behavior had its own drive, a challenge to teachers and the system, confirmation of our status as an “adult”. I lived without cigarettes for over ten years. It was easy for me; the experience of a “non-smoking” life turned out to be very attractive. There were practically no smoking people or smoking companies in my environment. Occasionally there was a desire to smoke, it was short-lived and was always associated with a “provoking” situation from past experience. Several times I had dreams in which I smoke and smoke with pleasure. So I consider the first experiment on quitting smoking to be quite successful and confirming Mark Twain’s conclusion: “Quitting smoking is easy”! “Let’s go have a smoke,” suggested a partner in a common cause. “I haven’t smoked for a long time, you know.” Well, just stay with me, for company. He was an authority for me, one might even say, an idol. I considered being in his company happiness and the highest form of trust. He smoked “deliciously.” One day I got tired of just “keeping company” and started smoking sometimes. One or two cigarettes a day, and even then, not everyone. The company of smokers expanded, and joint smoking breaks became a stable ritual. Then they gave me a pipe for my birthday. The ritual became more complex, became more “spectacular”, his status and, as it seemed to me, mine grew. There was a lot of “teenage” in my behavior, essentially infantile, very similar to the behavior at the time when I started smoking. And it was in many ways “addictive”, it concerned not only smoking. After a few months I smoked regardless of the “company”; I didn’t want to bother with a pipe, I switched to cigarettes. A cigarette break became an official way of “relaxing,” and very soon a reason to take time off work under the guise of a “smoke break.” A colleague told me about a similar experience in her smoking practice: “Patients came in a stream, there was no time to go to the toilet. Did not have.29.10.2015